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Terry Boot has done nothing to deserve this.
That’s the thought that recurs to him all through his conversation with Anthony Goldstein. Anthony arrived after a quick floo call to ask if he was busy, which he wasn’t — and then decided Terry was the best recipient of his boy troubles.
“So I had lunch with Zacharias and then after work I went to the pub with Neville,” Anthony began, once Terry had made them both tea and they’d got comfortable on the sofa. “They claim they aren’t avoiding each other but I’m a Ravenclaw, I can tell they are definitely avoiding each other.” This sentence will come back to haunt Terry, but technically, everything Anthony says in it is correct. “The thing is, there was… I dunno, there was something…” he trails off, choosing instead to drink tea to buy himself time. “There’s something different about both of them, about — I think about how they were towards me? That’s not there when I hang out with you or Michael or anyone else from the DA.”
Terry waits for Anthony to get there. He is a Ravenclaw, after all; he’s just said it. He keeps waiting.
“Do you know what it is?” Anthony says after an awkward beat of silence in which Terry really hopes he won’t have to spell this out.
“You have no idea?”
“Um,” Anthony says, chewing on his lip. “No?”
Terry wishes he had something stronger than tea, but breaking out the hard liquor would probably be insulting.
He takes a deep breath. You can do this, Terry. You can spoon feed this revelation to your mate who got straight Os for his OWLs. It’s fine.
“They both fancy you. They’ve both fancied you for ages.”
Anthony is silent for a moment, staring into his mug as if it held all the answers to questions he can’t put into words. “Really?”
Deep breaths, Terry. “Yes. Are you honestly saying you hadn’t noticed?”
Anthony looks at him with a guilty expression that confirms he is in fact the thickest person this side of the English Channel.
“What do I do?”
“Why are you asking me? I have no idea.” Terry does not deserve this! Terry dated Lisa Turpin for three years, had a brief fling with Susan Bones, and has been too busy trying to work out how adulthood works to even consider dating since he left school. He has no clue how to deal with this situation. His romance experience has been extremely uncomplicated and the best advice he can offer was ‘uh, you could go to Madam Puddifoot’s’ (which was certainly better advice than ‘when Susan Bones puts down her Arithmancy textbook to ask you if you want to snog, agree to it’).
Anthony looks so sad and pathetic that Terry spends several moments racking his brain for anything helpful to say. “I mean, do you even like either of them?” That’s probably something they should have established earlier, but it isn’t his fault that Anthony is terrible at having this conversation.
Anthony looks like this question has entirely blindsided him. Terry wants to throw himself into the sea. It’s what, surely not more than a few hours to the coast?
“That’s… a good question,” Anthony says slowly. He is clearly still considering it.
“Excuse me a moment, mate,” Terry says, getting up and walking, not running, to his phone. (He can’t understand why so many wizards refuse to have telephones — they’re much quicker than sending letters, and don’t require you to be wearing proper clothing like a floo call.)
Michael Corner takes four rings to pick up.
“Michael. Michael I’m dying. Please, Anthony is here and he’s just realised that Smith and Longbottom both fancy him and he’s never considered it before and he’s asking me for help and — Michael, stop laughing, I’m serious! Michael this is an emergency. You’ve got to come ov— You son of a bitch, you just hung up on me.” He takes a moment to stare at his handset in disbelief before he puts it back in its cradle. His last hope deserts him.
He returns to the living room to find Anthony still deep in thought. “You know, Terry, I think you have helped. I might come over again tomorrow, if that’s alright? Or maybe the day after. I’ve got to… to think about it.”
Terry doesn’t even have to fake his beaming smile. And when Anthony leaves, he pours himself a shot of whiskey.
Zacharias Smith is the last person Neville expects at his door, but there he is: standing slightly too close and scowling. He barges his way in before Neville has the chance to ask what he’s doing here or ask him to come inside.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you and Anthony, Longbottom, but I don’t appreciate you monopolising all his time, alright?” he says abruptly.
Whatever Neville thought he’d say — and he hasn’t even got that far, honestly, still too surprised to see him at all — it wasn’t that. He hasn’t seen Anthony in weeks; he’s sent a few letters, and seen him in the Ministry cafeteria a few times, but Anthony always smiles a little tightly and makes excuses to leave. At first Neville worried he’d done something to anger Anthony, but that isn’t it — it’s more like Anthony’s nervous? Neville wracked his brains for anything he had done differently the last time they’d hung out, but he can’t think of anything.
“Nice to see you too, Smith, I’m well, would you like a drink?” Neville says sarcastically, though he does go to the cupboard to get two glasses.
“Hullo Longbottom, no drink thanks,” Zacharias says as if the words physically pain him. Neville takes the opportunity while his back is turned, putting Zacharias’s glass back in the cupboard, to roll his eyes.
Neville forces Zacharias to wait while he gets himself water and then takes a drink before he addresses what Zacharias said first. Zacharias bounces on his heels impatiently.
“I haven’t seen Anthony in weeks,” he says at last. “I think he’s avoiding me, not sure why.”
When he looks at Zacharias, Zacharias quickly schools his face into something less vulnerable than surprise. Zacharias Smith always has the answer, is never caught off-guard, is a perfect know-it-all jerk. He does not look at Neville as he says, “I haven’t seen him either. When did you last see him?”
“He was in the Ministry cafeteria last week, but if you mean properly, then it must’ve been...the seventh, maybe? Eighth? The Sunday.” Zacharias narrows his eyes as if Neville has any reason to lie to him; Neville stares back, because he’s got nothing to hide.
“I saw him on the seventh,” Zacharias says like a challenge.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. I saw him in the evening, at the pub. I can’t prove it to you — nothing out of the ordinary happened, He always gets—”
“Fish and chips, I know,” Zacharias interrupts. “I saw him in the morning — we went flying. We don’t always, but it wasn’t weird or anything, there’s no reason for—” He breaks off, frustrated, and Neville shrugs.
“Maybe he’s just busy?” Neville says, but he doesn’t believe it, and he can tell Zacharias knows he doesn’t.
“He’d say so,” Zacharias says, and Neville knows he’s right.
They both pause, thinking, and then Zacharias says, “Do you have any beer? Not butterbeer, I mean something alcoholic.”
Classic. Of course Zacharias would turn down water to then demand alcohol.
Neville goes to the pantry and gets him a bottle. While he’s there, he gets himself one too — he’ll need it.
“He’s such a loser, have you seen how passionate he gets about paperwork? Explaining all the different forms at his job for — I dunno, registering to consider getting up a petition or something,” Zacharias says, gesturing with his fourth beer bottle. They’ve been drinking pretty steadily, so Zacharias is slurring his words slightly.
Neville holds his alcohol a little better, but not by much. “It’s so boring but his face just — lights up, you know? So I just let him talk about it,” Neville says, nodding.
“You get passionate about boring shit too,” Zacharias says. He’s trying to scowl, but it’s not working quite right, and instead of looking cross he just looks comical. “All the, the plants and keeping small children safe and shit.”
“Keeping small children safe is important!” Neville says, heated even though it’s 1999 and he hasn’t actually seen a child since he was in London in August.
“See, there you go!” Zacharias says, and this time some of his beer sloshes out of the bottle because he’s holding it at a disastrous angle. Serves him right.
“What, are you saying you’ve never been enthusiastic about anything in your life?” Neville says. His voice is louder than he wants it to be and he is not sure why he so desperately wants to prove Zacharias wrong. “You played quidditch, didn’t you? Weren’t you passionate about that?”
“Of course I was,” Zacharias says, scoffing. “But that’s sport, that’s different. And I never got on anyone’s dick for not caring about it.”
“Making sure children don’t die is basic human decency,” Neville says exasperatedly. “I wasn’t getting on your dick about it for fun.”
“Sor-ry, I was motivated by that other basic human thing, not dying or getting crucio’d,” Zacharias says. “Just because you had nothing to live for doesn’t mean the rest of us didn’t.”
“Fuck you—” Neville says, shuffling towards him awkwardly because there’s no dignified way to scoot across the floor. Why are they sitting on the floor? Neville has a sofa! But apparently they just sprawled on the floor instead when they started this get-drunk-in-Neville’s-flat nonsense, which in retrospect is good news given how much beer Zacharias has spilled with wild hand motions.
“What are you going to do about it?” Zacharias says, sounding like some kind of bad muggle film villain. Neville puts his beer down so he can grab Zacharias by the shirt, but before he can decide what the step after that is, Zacharias leans forward to meet him and kisses him instead of… the thing Neville hasn’t decided yet.
Kissing him had not previously been an option, but now that it’s happening Neville is finding that it’s not half bad, actually. All of Neville’s previous kissing experience has been soft — if not always loving (some slightly desperate fumblings at school come to mind), it’s always been gentle. Zacharias, in contrast, kisses like it’s some kind of game that can be won. Neville’s not sure how to win or what the end result is, but he’s mildly horrified to find that it is much more enjoyable than drinking beer and discussing their hopeless mutual crush.
Somewhere in between getting rid of shirts and starting to think about fumbling with belts, Zacharias pulls away and they just stare at each other, breathing hard. Neville isn’t sure what to say, and the decision is taken out of his hands by Zacharias, who puts his shirt back on, finds his shoes by the door and leaves with nothing more than a nod and a, “Longbottom.”
Zacharias arrives unannounced three times in the next week. There’s very little talking.
It’s after the third night’s activities that Zacharias says, “Have you heard from Anthony?”
Neville shakes his head. It feels odd to bring Anthony into this, even if Anthony was where this started. He also hasn’t heard from him, which is perhaps more salient to the question.
“We should find out, ask around. Someone will know why he’s avoiding us. Or at least if he’s avoiding everyone else.”
Neville can’t read Zacharias’s face as Zacharias says this. It’s not like their thing has replaced his crush on Anthony — there are absolutely no feelings here, for one, except perhaps for some grudging camaraderie. He assumes it’s the same for Zacharias.
“Sure,” Neville says. “I can ask at the Ministry, see if WizAdmin is especially busy.”
“Good.”
When Zacharias leaves, he doesn’t mention any sort of time frame for their Anthony investigation, but Neville assumes they’ll see each other soon enough regardless.
The most sensible approach Neville can think of for the Anthony dilemma — and honestly, he’s not sure why he didn’t think of it earlier — is to ask Anthony’s other friends. Anthony has plenty of friends who are not him or Zacharias, after all, and they will presumably have a better idea of what is going on.
He floos Terry, who says apologetically that he only has a few minutes, so Neville doesn’t bother to floo over completely and just sticks his head in the fire. It tickles slightly.
“Has Anthony been avoiding you?” Neville asks, getting right into it after they have exchanged all the requisite pleasantries. Terry’s in a hurry, after all.
“No?” Terry says, but phrases it like a question, clearly baffled. “Why would he be?”
“I don’t know,” Neville says. “He’s avoiding me and Zacharias, so I wondered if it was all his friends or maybe just us for some reason.”
Terry sighs heavily and scrubs at his face with his hand. He abruptly looks like he’s aged about ten years. “What an idiot.”
“Do you know what’s going on?”
“Yeah. He just doesn’t know how to deal with having romantic feelings,” Terry says, rolling his eyes. “Or maybe just having romantic feelings directed at him? I don’t even — ugh, I can’t believe him.” Before Neville can ask him to elaborate, there’s a knock on the door on Terry’s end, and Terry stands up. “Sorry, Nev, that’s my nan. I’ve gotta go. Hope he starts being less of an idiot soon. Bye!”
Neville ends the floo call and has a shot of firewhiskey because it’s after midday and he deserves it. Of course Anthony fancies Zacharias. And of course he’s avoiding everyone because of it. What an idiot.
As a last-ditch hopeful effort the next day he asks Huang, who does most of the liaising between WizAdmin and the Auror Division, if WizAdmin is particularly snowed under.
“Of course they are,” she says. “They literally always are.” It’s a ridiculous question: WizAdmin is notoriously underfunded and the Death Eater Trials are still ongoing, though they’re lurching towards a conclusion at last. Even so.
“More so than usual, I mean?” Neville says optimistically. Maybe Terry was wrong! Maybe Anthony doesn’t fancy Zacharias after all!
“No, I don’t think so,” Huang says. “Why?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Neville says, deflating. “Thanks, Huang.”
“No problem,” Huang says, puzzled, as Neville wanders back to his desk. This is terrible.
When Zacharias next arrives (he never floo calls first, assuming Neville is always at home and never has anything better to do; the fact that so far he’s been right every time is frankly depressing so Neville chooses not to think about it), Neville fully intends to talk about Anthony, but the way Zacharias immediately pushes him up against the wall rather precludes conversation.
It’s only afterwards that Neville says, “Uh, have you found anything out about Anthony?”
Zacharias immediately gets up and starts collecting his clothes, scowling. “I hope you two are very happy together,” he says, getting dressed.
“What?”
“There’s no need to rub it in, Longbottom. Wouldn’t have thought you were that cruel.”
“No, Zacharias, wait — I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Anthony’s hiding because he fancies you,” Zacharias says through gritted teeth. “Happy?”
“I thought he — oh,” Neville says, reconsidering what Terry had said. He’d assumed Terry meant Zacharias, but he’d never actually specified.
He is supposed to be happier about this revelation, he suspects, but the way Zacharias is stomping around the room just makes him feel slightly queasy.
“Have a wonderful life together, Longbottom,” Zacharias says, not bothering to put on his shoes and instead just disappearing into the living room to floo home. There’s a hiss as the fire flares up and Neville is left alone.
He stares at the ceiling for a while before getting up and putting on clothes. He would floo call Anthony to see he’s not busy, but in all likelihood Anthony would mysteriously become busy if his face appeared in the fire, what with the avoiding thing he has going on. He gets Ginny to do it instead.
Anthony has about seven facial expressions in the five seconds after Neville appears in his living room before settling on apologetic and a little strained. “Ginny just called,” he says. “She said she’d be over soon.”
“That was me,” Neville says, feeling guilty, but the way Anthony looks poised to run tells him it was the only way to see him. “I got her to check because you’re avoiding me.”
Anthony bites his lip. Neville’s sure his poker face used to be better, but perhaps he’s gone soft in the year since they were fighting for their lives. It’s a cheering thought.
“Zacharias says you fancy me,” Neville says. No point in beating around the bush — Anthony’s done enough of that for both of them.
Anthony pales. “He does?”
“... Is it not true?” Neville’s first thought is that Zacharias has set him up and this is some kind of cruel gag — he didn’t say how he found out the information, after all. On the other hand, he had seemed genuinely cross about it.
Anthony bites his lip and looks at the carpet, studying it as if it could reveal how to bring people back from the dead. “I, uh, I… I sort of fancy both of you?” he said quietly, going from pale to an impressive shade of pink. “I assume Zacharias didn’t tell you that.”
Neville is silent for so long that Anthony looks up, clearly afraid, and Neville honestly doesn’t know how to respond. “No, he didn’t. I don’t think he knows that bit. Could I use your floo for a moment?”
“I… guess?” Anthony says, baffled.
“Excellent.” Neville throws some floo powder in the fire and sticks his head in. When the world stops spinning he finds himself staring at Zacharias Smith’s living room, which contains a very naked Zacharias Smith.
“Jesus Christ!” Zacharias says as soon as he sees Neville. He moves to shield himself with his hands, despite the fact that Neville had exactly the same view not even an hour earlier and Zacharias certainly hadn't minded then.
"Bloody hell, Longbottom,why can't you use a telephone like sensible people?”
“Who do you know with a telephone?”
“Lots of people! What do you want? Would have thought you had better people to talk to than me.”
Neville decides that sometimes you've just got to let some things pass by without comment.
“Look, put on some trousers and come to Anthony's.”
“I have no desire to see you two snog happily, thanks," Zacharias says snidely.
Neville heaves a much put upon sigh. "Smith. Smith, for fuck's sake, he was avoiding both of us."
“What are you saying?” Zacharias is so distracted by this that he forgets about his hands. If questioned, Neville will claim he doesn't notice.
“I'm saying—” Neville hesitates. This really seems like something he should hear from Anthony. “I'm saying put on trousers and come to Anthony's.”
“No, fuck off.” Zacharias sits back down on his sofa resolutely.
Neville doesn't bother to say goodbye before pulling his head out of the fire.
After making a half hearted attempt to remove the soot from his hair, Neville says, “I told Zacharias to come over but he doesn't believe me. Can you?”
Anthony opens his mouth like he has several questions he'd like to ask before that, but considers for a moment and apparently thinks better of it, because he just holds out his hand for the floo powder. Anthony keeps his floo powder not in an old jam jar like Neville, but in a beautiful, intricately carved wooden box with writing on the lid that Neville can't read. The carvings, rather incongruously, portray leaves and some kind of red fruit.
Anthony then proceeds to stick his head in the fire, which admittedly gives Neville an excellent opportunity to stare at his arse. There's a beat and then Zacharias screams so loud Neville can hear it through the connection.
A few minutes later, Anthony emerges, his face bright red. “He's, uh, just going to put trousers on,” he says.
“Excellent.”
“Would you like tea? I think I could do with some tea,” Anthony continues, blush not receding at all.
“That'd be lovely, thanks, milk and sugar would be grand.” He almost mentions how Zacharias takes his tea, but remembers just in time that Anthony and Zacharias have been friends for far longer. Well, for a long time. It's not like Neville and Zacharias are friends.
Anthony brings back a teapot, three cups, milk and sugar just as Zacharias emerges from the fireplace. He's clothed now, even going the extra mile and wearing a shirt. When he steps off the mat in front of the fireplace, he leaves two perfect sooty footprints behind.
Anthony pours the tea and hands it out before anyone speaks.
“I know I owe you both answers,” Anthony begins, “but I want to clear up — Zach, what exactly did you hear and who did you hear it from? Neville says you said that I fancy him?”
Zacharias gives him a look that clearly says he has very skewed priorities. Neville has been the recipient of that look once or twice in the last fortnight and recognises it instantly.
“I rang Michael Corner,” Zacharias says shortly.
“What did he say?”
“He said ‘how did you get this number, Smith’ and then when I asked him why you were avoiding me he just about pissed himself and said you fancied Neville and I hung up.”
“In the middle of the sentence?”
“I didn't know it was the middle of the sentence, did I! He was still laughing so hard it's a miracle I understood him at all, frankly.”
“Right. Well, uh, that's cleared up.” Anthony looks miserable at the prospect of having to actually address the demiguise in the room. “I—” he starts but then stops, becoming if possible even more miserable. “I don't know what to do,” he says quietly.
“You don't have to — to choose between us, if you don't want to,” Neville says, glancing at Zacharias in the hope that he doesn't straight up murder Neville on the spot.
“What do you mean?” Anthony says, but Neville is too busy looking at Zacharias to see his face. Zacharias's eyebrows are doing their best attempt at migrating right off his face, but he doesn't appear to have any plans to cause Neville bodily harm.
“I mean, if you fancy both of us, you could choose both of us.”
“Bold of you to assume I'd be fine with this, Longbottom,” Zacharias says.
“I didn't exactly see an opening to discuss it in the last twenty seconds, funnily enough, and I wanted Anthony to stop doing his best impression of a glumbumble,” Neville retorts, “instead of letting him wallow in it while you complained just for the sake of it.”
Before Zacharias can reply, Anthony interrupts with, “I don't understand. Why would you suggest that if you can't stand each other?”
“We can stand each other!” insists Zacharias defiantly.
Anthony looks rightly sceptical. “Have you ever in your whole life used Neville’s first name?”
The silence was incriminating enough.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t get on,” Zacharias says at last. “I mean, we’ve been getting — well, um.”
Anthony looks like his brain may be melting out of his ears.
“If he has a heart attack and dies, it’ll be your fault,” Neville says to Zacharias, who for once looks a little sheepish.
“So you and — really?” Anthony is apparently not capable of full sentences, but at least he’s capable of speech.
“Yeah, I guess,” Neville says, as if there can be any ‘I guess’ about it.
Anthony takes a moment to reconcile that with how he had previously known the world to function and gulps his tea like a dying man.
“And you think that all three of us could work?”
“I don’t see why not,” Zacharias says. Neville nods. For the first time, there’s a genuine smile on Anthony’s face. Neville thinks it’s kind of magical, watching it take over his whole face slowly as he realises that actually, he can have everything he wants.
Neville really, really wants to kiss him.
As he gets up to do just that (because that’s allowed now, he is going to kiss Anthony Goldstein!), Zacharias says, “But if you did have to choose between us, you’d choose me, right?”
Anthony’s mouth is too preoccupied to say anything.